Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Return on Energy: Rethinking ROI in the Age of Burnout w/ John R. Miles | EP 618
Fri, 30 May 2025
In episode 618 of Passion Struck, host John R. Miles delivers a powerful solo reflection that caps off Mental Health Awareness Month with one essential question:"What’s the real Return on your Energy?"Drawing on recent interviews with Dr. Judith Joseph and Dr. Andrew Brodsky, as well as past solo episodes that introduced frameworks like H.O.M.E. and L.E.N.S., this episode unpacks how high-achievers—especially leaders—often burn out not from doing too little, but from mismanaging their most finite resource: mental energy.Click Here for the Full ShownotesExplore More: The Ignited Life NewsletterIf today’s episode sparked something in you, you’ll love The Ignited Life—our free Substack newsletter created to fuel your growth between episodes.👉 Subscribe now at TheIgnitedLife.net.What You’ll Learn in This Episode:Why ROE (Return on Energy) is the real metric for modern leadershipThe four biggest energy leaks: Over-functioning, Over-identification, Overexposure, and Over-responsibilityHow high-functioning depression masks burnout in top performersPractical tools for restoring your emotional margin and protecting your energyThe five essential “energy investments” that recalibrate your focus and clarityHow to Connect with John:Connect with John on Twitter at @John_RMilesFollow him on Instagram at @John_R_MilesSubscribe to our main YouTube Channel and to our YouTube Clips ChannelFor more insights and resources, visit John’s websiteSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the real Return on Energy?
Coming up next on Passion Struck, have you ever looked at your calendar and realized your time is maxed out, but what's really gone is your energy? In this episode, I'm flipping the script on performance because in the age of burnout, it's not just about how much you get done. It's about how well you protect the one resource everything else depends on, your energy.
Chapter 2: Why is Return on Energy important for leaders?
If you've been running at full capacity, but still feeling drained, this one's for you. We're talking return on energy and why it might be the most overlooked metric in your life and leadership. Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles.
And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.
We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passion struck. Hey everyone, and welcome to episode 618. I am so grateful you're here, investing in your growth, your healing, and your pursuit of a life that truly matters.
Whether you're building a company, healing from burnout, or simply trying to reconnect with who you are, this is the place where we explore the mindset, habits, and systems that support lasting transformation. Now, a few quick updates. The Ignited Life, my new sub stack, is now live. Each week in it, I go beyond the podcast, sharing tools, stories, and reflections you won't find anywhere else.
And now it's also the home of our brand new merchandise line, gear designed to reflect the PassionStruck mindset. You can check it all out at theignitedlife.net, or of course, you can go to passionstruck.com. And if you haven't yet, head over to our YouTube channel. We're posting full episodes, exclusive clips, and behind-the-scenes content every week.
Just search Hash Instruct with John R. Miles on YouTube or hit the link in the show notes. And before we dive in, one quick look ahead. Next month, we're opening a new theme here on Passion Struck, the art of connection. I'll be exploring how we build meaningful relationships in our leadership, our lives, and our inner world.
And we're kicking it off with none other than Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn in a powerful conversation on presence, attention, and the heart of human connection. Now this month, we've been honoring mental health awareness by shifting the conversation, not just talking about mental illness, but exploring what it really takes to design a mentally sustainable life.
I kicked it off with episode 606, exploring why mental health is the quiet root beneath everything that matters. Then in episode 609, I shared five foundational habits that anchor you in uncertainty. In episode 612, we explored the power of reframing your inner world using the lens method and how the stories you tell yourself can either sabotage or sustain your resilience.
And in last week's solo episode, I introduced the HOME Framework, a new way to think about mental health as an ecosystem, not just as a checklist. Our guest episodes this week took it even deeper. On Tuesday, Dr. Judith Joseph joined me to unpack high functioning depression and how even the most driven achievers can be silently unraveling inside.
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Chapter 3: What are the four biggest energy leaks?
It affects parents, partners, caregivers, teammates, anyone who's had to take responsibility for the well-being of others. But here's the truth. Care is powerful, but without boundaries, it becomes self-erasure. Leadership, whether it's at work, at home, or in your community, isn't about martyrdom.
It's about discernment, knowing what's yours, what's shared, and what needs to be handed back with compassion and trust. So let's zoom out. These four patterns over-functioning, over-identifying, over-exposure, and over-responsibility aren't failures. They're survival strategies. They're ways we try to stay in control, stay valuable, stay safe. But the cost is clarity, creativity, capacity,
connection, and ultimately your ability to show up in the world from a place of strength, not strain. So here's the reflection I want to leave you with. Where are you leaking energy right now? Which one of these patterns feels the most familiar? Because once you name the drain, you can start to reclaim the flow. So we've gone through a lot in today's episode.
So what do we do with all this information? We've named the drains. We've exposed the invisible costs. Now it's time to rewrite the playbook because the traditional productivity model, it's outdated. It's obsessed with volume without asking about viability. It rewards activity over alignment. But here's what high performers actually need. A shift from time-based ROI to energy-based ROI.
And that means reframing productivity as a function of emotional clarity. So if you don't understand that, let me explain. You can have all the time in the world, but if your inner world is cluttered, reactive, or exhausted, The output won't land, the decisions won't stick, and the traction won't hold. So what should we actually be measuring?
Let me offer three core metrics that matter if you're serious about energy return on investment. The first is clarity to output ratio. Ask yourself, how much of my work is generated from clarity versus chaos. When you make decisions from a grounded state, not panic or pressure, you avoid rework. You avoid regret. One aligned decision saves hours of cleanup. This is why white space isn't lazy.
It's leverage. The next one is simple but powerful. Emotional margin is your buffer. It's the space between what hits you and how you respond. Without it, you react. You firefight. You spiral. With it, you stay grounded. You choose your response. You lead with intention. It's what keeps a hard conversation from becoming a meltdown. It's what turns a bad day into a blip instead of a breakdown.
And in high stakes roles. This isn't a luxury, it's leadership hygiene. If your emotional margin is gone, it doesn't matter how smart or skilled you are, you're flying with no altitude and eventually you'll crash. And then lastly, let's talk about decisions that feel right, not just look good on paper, because when a choice really resonates, You don't have to over-explain it.
You don't have to spend the next three days second-guessing it. It holds up, even under pressure. But when it doesn't, you can feel the friction. You justify it. You tweak it. You scramble to make it work. That's energy you never get back. Dr. Andrew Brodsky brought this up when he joined me earlier this week.
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Chapter 4: How does high-functioning depression affect performance?
Because when you shift that question, your decisions change, your strategy changes, You change. Return on energy isn't soft. It becomes your edge. So let's land with something tactical. Because awareness is great, but what changes the game is how you move. Let's talk about energy investments, not productivity hacks, not five-minute fixes. I'm talking about practices that protect your capacity.
Here are five that I use and that I've seen transform how top performers stay grounded, clear, and energized. Let's start with the one most of us ignore, scheduling time for nothing. No meetings, no input, just space to process, reflect, and reset. This isn't wasted time. It's thinking time. And honestly, most of your best ideas... They don't happen in the meeting. They happen between them.
Give your mind room to breathe, and your strategy will follow. Now, once you've created some breathing room, here's the next move. Don't carry it all alone. Think of this as emotional hygiene. Just like you brush your teeth or stretch after a workout, this is how you clear emotional buildup before it turns into burnout. Because whether you lead a team, a family, a classroom,
or just your own ambitious life, your nervous system affects everyone around you. If you're off balance, that energy ripples out. So build in places to reset. That might be a coach, a therapist, a mentor, a partner, or a trusted friend who sees the real you No armor required. Dr. Joseph put it powerfully. Suppressing emotion might look composed, but it's a shortcut to depletion.
Emotional presence, that's what keeps you grounded, focused, and able to sustain the pace without losing yourself in it. So now that we've looked inward, let's look at what's coming at you. Because for most of us, the problem isn't doing too little. It's trying to do everything. with no filter. That's where boundaries come in. Not as walls, but as bandwidth protectors.
You can't do deep work in six-minute increments between meetings. So treat your time like it's energy, because it is. Block your mornings. Shut down earlier. Build in buffer zones between your calls so you actually arrive with presence. Boundaries aren't rigid. They're respectful of your mind, your energy, and your mission.
So next up, let's go a little bit more personal because clarity doesn't show up on demand. It needs a rhythm, a ritual. So ask yourself, what helps you hear yourself again? For me, it's a morning walk without my phone. For others, it might be journaling. But here's a simple framework you can use weekly. Think about what drained me? What fueled me? What do I want to do differently?
Just those three questions answered consistently can shift you from pinball into intentional leadership. It's not just about overhauling your life. It's about building in checkpoints with yourself. When we talk about energy, we often forget the most literal part of it. If your output feels flat, scattered, or forced, it might not be about your schedule. It might be about your inputs.
In a world obsessed with doing, we forget that energy isn't just drained, it's also generated. And one of the most sustainable sources of energy is meaningful input. Not doom scrolling, not passive content consumption, but things that genuinely nourish your curiosity, your perspective, and your sense of self. Think, reading something that isn't for work, but stirs something in you.
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Chapter 5: What practical tools can restore emotional margin?
Listening to a podcast that expands your thinking. Creating something just for the joy of it. Having conversations that make you feel more like you. This isn't about optimizing downtime. It's about staying connected to what lights you up so your energy has somewhere to return to. Because here's the truth, you can't keep pouring it out if you're never pouring it in.
So ask yourself, what kind of input leaves you feeling more human? That's your fuel. Make time for it. So let's bring today's episode full circle. Back to Joseph Wynn. Back to the quiet erosion under all the success. He wasn't burned out from doing too little. He was exhausted from carrying too much weight. of what wasn't his, from judging every thought, from performing his way through pain.
And the breakthrough didn't come from a better system or another tool. It came from reclaiming his energy from the inside out. It came from realizing this. You don't scale your life by squeezing more in. You scale it by leaking less. That's why this shift matters. Because the truth is, your mind knows what matters, but your energy, that's what actually builds it.
And if you're constantly operating at capacity, reacting from depletion, running on borrowed bandwidth, your ideas don't get sharper. They get stuck. Your vision doesn't expand. It shrinks. And the future you're building, it starts to blur. So here's the invitation I want to leave with you. I'm going to give you a simple but powerful prompt.
If I had just 10% more clean energy every day, what would I redirect it towards? Now ask yourself, what decisions would get easier? Would you finally finish that project? Would you show up more present at home? Would you lead with clarity instead of control? Your answers to these questions will show you where to start because protecting your energy isn't a luxury. It's leadership hygiene.
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Chapter 6: How to measure and protect your mental energy?
And it's the future of meaningful productivity. And that's a wrap. If this episode sparks something for you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Someone who carries more than they show. Someone who needs the reminder. Energy is not unlimited, but it is reclaimable.
For more tools like this, don't forget to subscribe to The Ignited Life, our weekly substack with stories, frameworks, and tools designed to help you live a life that reflects who you are. Check out our YouTube channel for full interviews, behind-the-scenes content, and exclusive leadership insights. And yes, we've got merch, gear that reflects the mindset of living passion struck.
Chapter 7: What patterns normalize energy leaks in our lives?
You can find it at passionstruck.com. And as we wrap Mental Health Awareness Month, I want to thank you for being part of this journey. Every episode this month was designed to build towards something deeper, not just managing life, but living it with integrity and alignment. And starting next week, we open a new chapter. Our theme for June is the art of connection.
And we're starting where all real connection begins, with presence. Jon Kabat-Zinn joins me next Tuesday for a beautiful grounded conversation on attention, awareness, and what it means to truly be with the people and moments that matter.
We already have this superpower called awareness. And yet, when we go to school, all we're taught is how to think. And thinking is a great superpower, and it's given rise to science and everything else.
But actually, even a lot of the science comes out of the moments before the thinking sets in, where you have a nonverbal realization, an aha moment, where you see things that no one else has seen up to that point. Then you win the Nobel Prize, or everybody thinks, wow, what a great insight. And sometimes mindfulness is even called insight meditation. But it's not something you do.
It's something you learn to inhabit that's already yours. And that's awareness.
Until then, notice more, connect with what's real, and live life passion-struck.
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